jawfish

The Cessna is Coming! The Cessna is Coming!
john posted in politics & culture on May 12th, 2005

A couple of errant pilots in a Cessna 150 buzzed Washington DC and brought the legislature to a halt. Reporters, schoolchildren, Senators were rushed out of the Capitol yesterday when authorities couldn’t turn around a tiny unarmed private plane. Papers didn’t say whether the Whitehouse also emptied, but they did report that the VP was whisked off to his undisclosed location.

Afterward, sober policemen conferred and congratulated themselves, albeit modestly, for a smooth evacuation. Did Dave Barry write this story?

Let me get this straight:
A plane that can barely fly at 105 knots, weighs 1000 lbs, and carries 500 lbs total, entered a resticted area that covers half of Maryland. The Air Force, charged with tracking incoming hypersonic ICBMs, couldn’t figure out what it was. Presumably they asked the air traffic folks too. Fearing it might be an attacker, the anti-aircraft cops waited until it was a couple of minutes from the center of town, and then pulled the emergency cord. This stopped Congress in its tracks, not an altogether bad thing I admit, and created a front page story. Representative Pelosi lost her shoe. Whooping sirens were heard all over town. Afterward people piously expressed fear and relief.

Cue Mr. Barry: ” I am not making this up.”

Huh? Our Brave Leaders are so frightened that they run for cover when a Cessna flies over? In DC they are much more likely to be mugged or car-jacked. What would have happened if their oft-mentioned Blackberries had gone dead? Panic in the streets?

Seriously: so what if a light plane flies into a building? It happens monthly, similar accidents happen on the freeways of America hourly. So what? Why are people so frightened? We baby-boomers grew up with the actual threat of total nuclear annihilation. Later we found out it was closer than we thought during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It probably changed popular culture, and we did have silly air raids ( what, we are protecting ourselves against vaporization by hiding under a desk?), but it was a real threat. So now we are such a flock of sheep that we run for cover when a shadow passes? No one was embarrassed?

Cue The Sneer: “Oh BTW the marines lost a few more body parts in Fallouja today, but there will be law&order any day now.”